Warehouses aren’t much fun to visit and this little inspection simply reinforced that sentiment; stacked wooden crates of things was pretty much what it came down to. It was a necessary evil and ‘Just In Time’ manufacturing was relegated to a date far in the future. We had security, we had stout doors and a full inventory list went back north with each boat run. Our supply guy at Rulo Transport checked the new list versus the old versus our transport log and then Sonya checked his work after. It was all very neat and clean, it was also incredibly mind numbing.

We headed out to the office and crew barracks from there to see how that entire setup was running because the comfort of the crews while in port was still important to me. Patrick was in the office shuffling through various paperwork piles when I got there. He had inventories, load sheets and bills of sale from our produce and pelts. He brought me up to speed and told me that all remaining produce and pelts would be on our boat and the now empty boat would return to Rulo with warehouse goods and beer. Well that was good news.

I quickly scribbled out a letter to Sonya asking her to come down and put our accounting situation straight, mentioning that with any luck I’d be able to meet her in either St. Charles or St. Louis on my way back through. Both boats would be leaving tomorrow morning. With that out of the way I toured the barracks and it was looking good, everything was clean and freshly painted. The entire second floor was the barracks with dozens of beds and a small pot-bellied stove right in the center. My signs of ‘Things not Allowed’ were posted also.

The first floor had the duty desk and the office, with the back two thirds of the first floor consisting of the large kitchen with its equally-sized adjacent pantry, along with the dining hall holding several bench seating tables. It was all very utilitarian with enough comfort for a couple of nights' layover; far better for the guys than sleeping rough while in town.

With the site inspections complete, we went back up to Byrne’s where I’d arranged for a final meeting with all of the primaries who were in the area. I hung out at the bar with John while we waited for everyone to show up. We were going to eat in the private function room which was being setup as we waited. Coffee was the natural go-to drink for a get-together such as this. It wasn’t a party after all, it was a business meeting.

Every had finally gathered at the table and we munched on appetizers as worked through our meeting; appetizers on the frontier being mainly bread with butter, honey or jam. Rachel had volunteered to take notes so I mentally scheduled her topics for last. I led the meeting off by discussing the total holdings in the area and the purpose of each. When you listed everything out it was rather impressive, particularly when you considered the short amount of time I’d been in 1822. I also listed out what was going on up in Rulo and gave them some rough numbers.

Grace reported the numbers on Marine House and its surrounding fields; we had purchased the tornado stricken property and its fields to bring our total to about a mile square in all. She stated that we had been short-handed before but now we definitely lacked the amount of folks necessary to properly operate the additional tillage. The end result was the authorization to hire or buy ten additional field hands. I instructed John to triple his capacity and promised to send my engineers down to see if we could make any improvements to his set up. He also wanted to dig a well on-site and I gave my approval for that. We didn’t need stream water for all facets of the operation. I did ask him to investigate buying all adjoining properties upstream to maintain water quality, that project had to be handled quietly though. The warehouses were just fine but we also decided to hire a warehouse manager who could pull double duty acting as the barracks manager.

The only topic left was the restaurants and I plowed straight into that. I needed all of our cooks including the Marine House and the Boatsmen’s barracks trained up properly. It didn’t have to be great food at the Boatsmen’s barracks or even at Mickey’s – it did need to be good food though. I expected Byrne’s, the Marine House and Claire’s Café to offer up exceptional food. John and Rachel were tasked with setting up a training plan for all the locations; to sweeten the task I offered up additional investment. John and Rachel were already in agreement with this plan, it was one of the things we had hammered out during those hours of sitting around chatting. I now held 48% of their business, while they each held 26%.

And that was the conclusion of business for the day.

I rode slowly back to the Marine House with Grace alongside and Amos and Brin trailing behind; it was a nice summer afternoon ride with plenty of shade from the road side trees. We discussed what she should be planting next year considering the primary mission of the facility, we also discussed wood for the winter and how much was actually needed. More importantly came the discussion about starting to lobby the state capitol for money, that was definitely to be a longer and much more involved effort.

As we arrived at the gate the sentry was talking with three men who were definitely the worse for the wear: all of the were lacking full physical functionality in one way or the other. Definitely potential new residents and Grace swung down immediately and took over for the sentry, apparently she was getting a routine down fairly pat. I left that business to her with Amos and Brin in accompaniment her while I took all the horses on up to the stable.

I caught up with Grace again at supper that evening and let her know that we would be spending the night down at the barracks and then we were off to Memphis at first light.